Rome [ENA] On May 17 and 18, the Archaeological Superintendence of the metropolitan area of Rome, the province of Viterbo and southern Etruria will host in Rome the final conference of the CLIMA project (Cultural Landscape Risk Identification, Management and Assessment).The project is a collective research carried out by the University of Tuscia (UNITUS, coordination), University of Stirling (UNISTI), Cyprus University

of Technology (CUT), ALMA Systems sas (ALMA), University of Copenhagen (UCPH) and has the Superintendence of Rome as associated partner.
Europe has a rich and diversified cultural Heritage and it is often characterized by the presence of exposed and buried archaeological remains. That cultural heritage is today at risk due to specific anthropogenic and environmental pressures, and in particular, due to the continuous intensive agricultural activities and climate changes. These pressures create a series of immediate and future threats for these particularly sensitive cultural landscapes and for the historical, archaeological and environmental archives they preserve.

Cultural heritage is ravaged by suburbs sprawling out into the countryside, floods, war, earthquakes, climate change, agricultural activity, soil processes, water infiltration and so on. C.L.I.M.A project aims to promote a highly interdisciplinary research, based on a soil-oriented approach, to develop efficient tools for the authorities responsible for cultural landscape preservation.Nowadays, authorities have a strong requirement for systematic, helpful, operational and affordable tools to monitor the degradation process and enable preventive maintenance. The outcomes of this research might be an advantage also for individuals and organizations outside the research community.

Aerial survey, image processing, and its relationship to ground survey: recent years have seen a significant increase in the use of remote sensing data in archaeology.
In particular, in cases of archaeological sites, where structures and artefacts exposed cohabit with others still buried and which have not been excavated, these threats remain the main factors of physical and chemical destruction and degradation. In such circumstances it is vital to preserve the buried archaeological heritage.
The soil, through its different functions, contributes to a whole series of eco-system services.

The Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection of the European Union (COM 2006/231) identifies key soil functions of which the maintenance and improvement have to be considered in soil-related policies of the EU.Together with the ecological and socio-economic ones, the conservation of the buried archaeological heritage is another important function of the soil identified within this strategy. Therefore, according to European Commission (2006) further assessments are necessary to characterize that function and better describe its spatial variability. Human activities related to land uses (mainly agricultural activities) have always been the main risk factor for the archaeological heritage.

A recent research carried out in Britain and Italy has shown that at least 70% of archaeological sites in rural areas are subject to direct and physical damage caused by agricultural activity. In addition to direct damage (due to plowing, drainage, irrigation, etc.), agricultural activity amplifies the erosive activity of the soil, reducing its ability to preserve the buried heritage, but also affecting structural stability and natural deterioration of exposed structures.

There is no doubt that the monitoring of land uses and processes related to them, such as soil erosion caused by agricultural activities (anthropogenic pressures) and amplified by climate change (environmental pressures) it's crucial. The detecting of possible land movements that can degenerate into landslides in areas of greater risk, together with the control of vegetation and its impact on the exposed structures and, at the same time, the monitoring of their stability can therefore be a useful tool to help preventing damage to the archaeological heritage, both exposed and buried.

By the way, the CLIMA project promoted a highly interdisciplinary research in order to develop effective tools for the authorities responsible for the conservation of the cultural landscape. In particular, the main objective of the CLIMA project was to design and implement a multi-task WebGIS platform that integrates, in an innovative way, different remote sensing technologies (satellite, air, terrestrial) and GIS solutions for the interaction of the collected data. The aim is to create a tool able to manage both the mapping and the archaeological detection of the sites and, on different spatial scales (both macro and micro), the monitoring and evaluation of the most important risks that threaten them.